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Modern day sports people and spectators might readily use the divine name, or Jesus Christ, as expletives of frustration or exclamations of triumph, but they would rarely make a connection between games and religion. Support for one’s team might occasionally reach the heights of religious zeal, but associating athletic prowess with piety would be far from the thinking of most performers and onlookers. Yet, there are moments when even our modern sports spectaculars are conducted with quasireligious rituals.
These links, these intersections, are drawing greater academic interest in the early part of this new millennium with conferences in the USA in 2004 and in the UK in 2007 and tertiary-based courses springing up in several universtities around the world.
This collection of essays examines the links between sport, spirituality and everyday theology from the ancient Greek dominated world right through to the modern day olympics. It comes at this examination from a Judaco-Christian perspective.
Rev’d Dr Gordon Preece is Director of Macquarie Christian Studies Institute at Macquarie University (MCSI) and involved in the ongoing professional development of Christian lawyers. He is editor most recently of Rethinking Peter Singer (IVP, 2002) and with Simon Holt, The Bible and the Business of Life (ATF Press, 2004).
Robert Hess is a Senior Lecturer in Sport History with the School of Sport and Exercise Science at Victoria University.
